Cordless telephones have proven to be popular in domestic, business and industrial environments due to their unrestricted freedom of movement. A telephone subscriber is therefore not confined by the limitation of a station set extension cord. Instead, the subscriber has complete freedom of movement within a radio link range of up to about 300 m between a stationary base and its cordless portable handset.
Coextensive with cordless telephones, enhanced telephone services in both analog voice and data communications are presently available which support a broad range of applications in the same network. Utilizing currently available digital technology to its fullest extent preferably requires an alphanumeric display for transient and stored data. A typical example is a directory of names and telephone numbers stored in a memory of a conventional subscriber terminal and shown on a liquid crystal display (LCD). In known telephone station apparatus having such a display and which is directly connected to a local telephone company switching office by way of a telephone line over which voice and data signals are transmitted, data displays present no problems and indeed are quite common. Such apparatus is typified in U.S. Pat. No. 4,924,496 Figa et al, issued May 8, 1990, the disclosure of which is enclosed herein by reference.
A problem arises, however, in a cordless telephone handset not having an all-function display which, heretofore, appears to have been the norm. It is readily apparent, therefore, that the full potential of a cordless telephone is severely impeded either by the absence of a handset display or with a display having limited functional capabilities. Although the problem is alleviated by providing a display in the base station, it is exacerbated when the handset is remotely located, away from convenient access to the information provided by the display at the base.